The FBI has been watching Zazi for a year.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2344992/posts?page=1
Feds unsure if arrest of Najibullah Zazi and two others has foiled al-Qaeda terror plot
DAILY NEWS ^ | September 20th 2009 | James Gordon Meek
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 3:12:06 PM by george76
Federal agents from Denver and New York to Pakistan are still racing to solve an Al Qaeda bomb plot, unsure whether the arrest of three suspects has put the terror gang out of business.
“They’re still looking,” a senior counterterror official told the Daily News. As to whether they have identified all the conspirators, “nobody knows the answer for sure,” ...
Also nabbed for lying to feds was Flushing mosque Imam Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, an NYPD snitch who the FBI says alerted Zazi and his father, Mohammed, 53, after cops quizzed him about the son.
The senior official said the feds believe the plot is now “compromised” and would be “hard to bring forward.”
“We think we have a pretty good handle on the threat, but we’d know a lot more if Afzali hadn’t tipped them in the beginning,” ...
The source added that court papers released yesterday reveal only a “sliver” of the conspiracy.
“The FBI is investigating several individuals in the U.S., Pakistan and elsewhere, relating to a plot to detonate improvised explosive devices in the U.S.,” ... The FBI said Zazi admitted last week that Osama Bin Laden’s goons trained him in “weapons and explosives” last year at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan’s war-torn Pashtun tribal areas
Zazi, a Pashtun, used an e-mail address to send the images to himself under the alias “Kado Khan” - an 18th-century Afghan executed for plotting to kill a Pashtun tribal king.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...